New travel trailer expectations
Hello fellow campers. Purchased a new travel trailer last week. First trip for the 4 the weekend. Fresh water tank fell out at mile 105 and was drug down the interstate until fellow motorist flagged u...
Forum Discussion
We just returned home from our very first trip with our 2014 Forest River Salem. We went to the Grand Canyon. Very enjoyable trip.
Not so great experience with trailer. Stabilizer jacks broken before we brought it home along with inside cover to a/c, rocking chair broken, missing venetian blind rods, screws missing from microwave shelf. The dealer said he fixed these. Three days before leaving on our trip, the fresh water tank leaked water all over the trailer. I used a shop/vac and sucked up about a gallon of water from the carpet. The dealer said it was because there was a loose hose clamp inside the water tank that I had neglected to check. I would have had to dismantle part of the trailer to do so. We left on our trip Saturday morning and stopped to stretch our legs after several hours of driving. My husband noticed that the diamond plate skin on the front of the trailer had come unscrewed and was flapping in the breeze while all of the insulation was hanging out and looked like some had fallen away. We screwed it back together and continued driving. The water pump never worked the whole time we were on our trip. In Las Vegas, it was over *100 degrees and in the middle of the night our a/c quit working. We took it to an RV place and they worked on it. They also worked on our water pump/fresh water tank problem. Turns out the hoses couldn't get water through them because of kinks and being stapled to the floor. The repair guys figured all this our by slicing through our insulated underbelly and the fresh water tank. They fixed it by applying duct tape and running the water lines under the underbelly and now the duct tape is coming unstuck.
We contacted FR and they are sending a transport to pick up our trailer to take it back to the factory to have everything fixed on Wednesday.
My concern is that the floor under the carpet might mold. I don't know how long the water was leaking, not more than 4 hours probably. Also, the vent cover on the refrigerator blew off driving down the freeway and the black rubber strips that cover the screws along the seams of the trailer.
Are we being naive to think that all of these things can easily be fixed?
By the way, I tried to post all of this as a separate topic but for some reason, it kept getting deleted.
Not so great experience with trailer. Stabilizer jacks broken before we brought it home along with inside cover to a/c, rocking chair broken, missing venetian blind rods, screws missing from microwave shelf. The dealer said he fixed these. Three days before leaving on our trip, the fresh water tank leaked water all over the trailer. I used a shop/vac and sucked up about a gallon of water from the carpet. The dealer said it was because there was a loose hose clamp inside the water tank that I had neglected to check. I would have had to dismantle part of the trailer to do so. We left on our trip Saturday morning and stopped to stretch our legs after several hours of driving. My husband noticed that the diamond plate skin on the front of the trailer had come unscrewed and was flapping in the breeze while all of the insulation was hanging out and looked like some had fallen away. We screwed it back together and continued driving. The water pump never worked the whole time we were on our trip. In Las Vegas, it was over *100 degrees and in the middle of the night our a/c quit working. We took it to an RV place and they worked on it. They also worked on our water pump/fresh water tank problem. Turns out the hoses couldn't get water through them because of kinks and being stapled to the floor. The repair guys figured all this our by slicing through our insulated underbelly and the fresh water tank. They fixed it by applying duct tape and running the water lines under the underbelly and now the duct tape is coming unstuck.
We contacted FR and they are sending a transport to pick up our trailer to take it back to the factory to have everything fixed on Wednesday.
My concern is that the floor under the carpet might mold. I don't know how long the water was leaking, not more than 4 hours probably. Also, the vent cover on the refrigerator blew off driving down the freeway and the black rubber strips that cover the screws along the seams of the trailer.
Are we being naive to think that all of these things can easily be fixed?
By the way, I tried to post all of this as a separate topic but for some reason, it kept getting deleted.
